"There were definitely a lot of things about my private life that I didn't want anyone to see" "I wasn't naked, but I had seen videos of sexual acts"
"I saw how Tesla treated its customers and joked that I would never buy a Tesla."
Foreign media reported that employees of Tesla, a US electric car company, circulated video footage of customer vehicles collected to develop autonomous driving technology in chat rooms for about three years.
Among the videos, it is said to contain a number of sensitive private lives such as nudity of customers, which is even more controversial.
On Jan. 3, Reuters reported that from 6 to last year, Tesla employees shared a number of vehicle videos that could invade customers' privacy via internal messengers, based on interviews with nine former Tesla employees.
According to their testimony, among the videos shared was a naked man approaching a vehicle.
Not only that, but a video showing a speeding Tesla hitting a child on a bicycle went viral "like wildfire" through one-on-one chats.
There was also testimony that the video recording appeared to have taken place even with the vehicle's ignition off.
More than three years ago, some employees discovered a video of a unique submersible-shaped car parked in a garage that was identified as belonging to Tesla CEO Elon Musk as a car from the 9 series.
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However, Reuters said it had not obtained the video or images in question from all the employees interviewed and could not confirm whether the practice continues.
Reuters reported that Tesla employees were able to circulate footage of customers' vehicles from the inside because Tesla's extensive collection of video data may have been affected.
In the process of developing autonomous driving technology, a large amount of video data was needed to train the artificial intelligence (AI) system, and for this purpose, a large number of employees were hired to classify the collected images.
In its Customer Privacy Policy, Tesla states that "if you agree to share your data, you may provide Tesla with the data collected by your vehicle," but that "such data will not be linked to your personal account or vehicle identification number."
But seven former Tesla employees told Reuters that a computer program used by Tesla showed where the recordings were recorded and could potentially tell where the vehicle owner lived.
Boston Northeastern University Cybersecurity · David Chopnis of the Privacy Institute noted that "disseminating sensitive and personal content could be interpreted as a violation of Tesla's own privacy policy and could result in the intervention of the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC), which enforces federal laws related to consumer privacy."
It has not been confirmed whether Musk is aware of the video and Musk has not responded to requests for comment, Reuters reported.